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Yep. I've been complaining about this for years. It really frosts me to see someone going through the line at Kroger or Wal-Mart or where ever with a boatload of Doritos, Ho-Hos, Little Debbies, and a ton of soft drinks, and then when it's time to pay, out comes the SNAP card.

This (restrictions on SNAP) should have been the case long, long ago. It should be much more like WIC: you get certain named staple items, and that's that. You can have certain lean meats (in limited quantities), various fruits and vegetables (again in limited quantities), milk, real juice, rice, day-old white and wheat bread, a limited number of cans of soup, a limited number of actually nutritious heat-and-eat dinners (real meals, not pizza pockets), nutritious cereals, a very limited amount of raw sugar, a limited amount of raw flour, a limited amount of eggs, a limited amount of pasta (inexpensive pasta like spaghetti, not ready-made ravioli or whatever), vegetable prep (tomato paste, crushed garlic, etc.), a limited amount of peanut butter, a limited amount of jelly/jam/preserves (basic generic, not the expensive "gourmet" kind), and that's IT. No potato chips. No ice cream. No cookies or cookie dough. No cokes. No Kool-Aid or other such crap. None of it. An absolute minimum of processed anything.

If you're going to eat on my nickel, then you'll eat what I tell you to and like it. I'm happy to make sure you don't starve, but you're going to eat reasonable meals with reasonable portions and it's going to be healthy for you. And you're DAMN well going to cook it for yourself and not get ready-made junk food. Don't like it? Go buy your own damn food.

The two are not mutually exclusive. There is considerable support for the idea that obesity is a form of malnutrition.

Are you sure you're not refering to mall nutrition?

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness;Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyesAnd clever in their own sight! Isaiah 5:20-21 NASB

a limited amount of peanut butter, a limited amount of jelly/jam/preserves (basic generic, not the expensive "gourmet" kind), and that's IT. No potato chips. No ice cream. No cookies or cookie dough. No cokes. No Kool-Aid or other such crap. None of it. An absolute minimum of processed anything.

Not to be difficult but the inexpensive jellies and jams are all made with HFCS and chemicals. Organic grape jelly is probably the cheapest healthier choice and runs $2.29 for a small jar (not the tiny jar, the small one) . The good news is that all natural peanut butter and ketchup now cost the same as crap.

A huge part of the problem with poverty, obesity, and food stamps is that saving money can pack on the pounds and make you unhealthy. Those Ramen packets are 15¢ for 480 calories of fat, starch, and sodium. The Jiffy cornbread mix feeds a lot of people cheaply, and doses them heavily with fat , starch, and HFCS ... especially when you add a slab of butter or margarine. The one dollar frozen dinners actually aren't that bad a use of your SNAP dollar, but they also aren't really enough for an active youth as a meal.

I really have seen a huge shift in the last couple of years in the target community. I really do see a lot of people making better choices and I hear what they say to each other in the store and it's encouraging. I hear "good for you" and "serving" and things which suggest a medical approach to eating. I also hear a lot more of "I can only have one of those." or "I can't eat that any more." All of which suggests greater awareness of heart, blood pressure, or other medical issues.

Not to be difficult but the inexpensive jellies and jams are all made with HFCS and chemicals. Organic grape jelly is probably the cheapest healthier choice and runs $2.29 for a small jar (not the tiny jar, the small one) . The good news is that all natural peanut butter and ketchup now cost the same as crap.

A huge part of the problem with poverty, obesity, and food stamps is that saving money can pack on the pounds and make you unhealthy. Those Ramen packets are 15¢ for 480 calories of fat, starch, and sodium. The Jiffy cornbread mix feeds a lot of people cheaply, and doses them heavily with fat , starch, and HFCS ... especially when you add a slab of butter or margarine. The one dollar frozen dinners actually aren't that bad a use of your SNAP dollar, but they also aren't really enough for an active youth as a meal.

Pardon my callousness, but I really don't give a shit. These people are allegedly soooo poor they can't afford to feed themselves. Well, fine, I'm perfectly willing to help out someone who is actually so poor that they cannot afford to feed themselves (and their associated rug-rats). What I'm not willing to do is spend a bunch of excess money on organic fair-trade arugula and gourmet ketchup. If a little bit of jelly or some ketchup has some HFCS in it, then that's fine by me. It's a minimal amount when compared to cokes and Ding-Dongs. I'm not interested in marginally-better-for-you, very expensive food; I'm interested in getting them three solid, square meals a day so that they're not starving. Getting rid of processed foods will go a million miles toward that goal; worrying about HFCS in a few grams of jelly goes a few feet.

Being poor sucks. I know: I've been poor more than once. Part of that suckiness is that you don't get to have your choice of stuff. Don't like it? Stop doing the stuff that makes you poor.

Second, the list expresses your disdain for certain foods and the people that you perceive as your social inferiors, but doesn't reflect sound policy, just your prejudices.

How do you get "social inferiors" out of this list?

I think a good first step would be to ban all carbonated beverages containing sugar or aspartame.
Ban anything containing hfcs.
Ban candy.
Ban chips and doodles but not pretzels.
Ban anything made by Hostess, Little Debbie, or Hormel.
Ban real mayonnaise and fake cheese.

There isn't a thing on that list which I haven't eaten in excess in the past. It has nothing to do with social status, it has to do with coming around to the realization that if you want to live and be healthy you have to make good choices about what you eat. The same goes for smoking. It's not "low class" to smoke, it's just a terrible risk that doesn't really bring much in the way of reward.

I and other members of my family have also noticed that there is a considerable amount of conditioning to our tastes. Many of the things we thought were delicious treats 30 years ago are much less appealing now. Oysters and oyster sandwiches, ham, steaks, fry bread, greasy pizza, scrapple, and a host of stuff my grandmother cooked aren't nearly as good as we remember them being.

You stop eating meat for a couple of months and then walk into a grocery store sometime when the AC isn't running. It smells like something died.